On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 3:19 PM, Carlos Borroto carlos.borroto@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Peter Cock p.j.a.cock@googlemail.com wrote:
The "Test Tool Shed" is (as I understand it) effectively running galaxy-central (presumably updated daily or something like that), so it tests the latest and greatest Galaxy code-base and all the new Tool Shed features like the new <action> enhancements for tool dependency installation. That's fine as a live testbed for Galaxy and the Tool Shed itself (although not always ideal for us tool developers).
I have to say this was exactly my thoughts when developing a couple of tools recently.
I would like to have a suitable place where I can test my tools before promoting them to the Main Tool Shed. Because of the difference in the code base between Main and Test Tool Sheds, the later is not such a place. I know I could always run a local Tool Shed, but I feel having a public place for testing where I can ask for other users to test my work would be more useful.
I agree.
There has been some discussion about related issues on the IUC list.
One idea would be that the latest revision isn't automatically available for public installation (perhaps available only to those with the write access, i.e. the tool author or team), yet would still be automatically tested (and perhaps reviewed).
Speaking for myself as a tool author, I would be happy to upload a fix to the tool shed, wait for the automated test results, and only then flag the revision as "released" for public usage (or upload a tweaked version to fix whatever wasn't quite right and try again).
This would solve the problem of trying to use the Test Tool Shed for development and testing, when it doesn't match the current stable release and thus the environment into which the tool would be downloaded, installed, and used.
(Of course, I'm assuming that the main Tool Shed test framework should/would be testing the tools using the stable release Galaxy code - the main query in the previous email)
Regards,
Peter